But I have read the speech carefully and think it shows that he has been listening and thinking about the points that others, including the founders of this site, have been making about some aspects of the Gove legacy.

His speech distinguishes Labour policy from Gove’s, marks a subtle shift away from what the previous Labour government did and is forward looking.

It was refreshing to hear such a prominent politician speak in positive, rather than negative, terms about the professionals who make our schools work. Rather than being the enemies of promise, Twigg cast them as the “enablers of promise”.

It is so blindingly obvious that we can’t build a successful, flourishing school system on the back of disenchantment and low morale but the daily outpourings of negativity from the DFE have left many heads and teachers feeling discouraged and undervalued.

As one headteacher said to me last week: ‘I wonder if they will ever let us know if we are doing anything right”.

There is a place for appropriate challenge, and even some criticism, in our school system but the current government’s attitude is the equivalent of a teacher facing his or her class every morning with the words: “You are all absolutely useless – now go ahead and do your very best”. One can only imagine what Ofsted might think of that approach to a child and Labour is right to tack a different course.

Equally important were Twigg’s remarks about school “ freedoms”. It is a nonsense that some schools have “ freedoms” that other schools don’t have, simply on the basis of their “type”. We currently have a situation where a failing school can be forcibly turned into an academy and be given “freedoms” that a very good maintained school can’t have.

So if it is a good freedom – for example on curriculum flexibility – every school should have it. If it is a bad freedom – on admissions, or being given the chance to turn away children with SEN, to sell unhealthy food or employ unqualified teachers– it shouldn’t be given to any school.

Last week I wrote in the Guardian here about the muddle that has been left by successive governments setting up new academy schools with different funding agreements (all incorporating different rights and responsibilities).

There is a way of bringing some coherence back to this system. Barrister David Wolfe who blogs here has analysed the problems being stacked up by this piecemeal approach and has also suggested how legislation might be used to ensure that no schools is advantaged or disadvantaged by its “type”. Stephen Twigg should be applauded for wanting to tackle this problem.

Twigg’s statements on free schools /academies seem to have confused some people. However I read them as follows. As far as Twigg is concerned “free schools and academies are not a panacea for school improvement”, as we at LSN have been arguing for some time.  There are great academies, but there are also great maintained schools. Our data also shows that similar schools, whether maintained or academy, have improved at more or less the same rate over the past decade.

Twigg rightly argues that it is unrealistic for the DFE to oversee thousands of schools from the centre so there needs to be clear LOCAL oversight of ALL schools. More detail is needed on this point and former Labour Education Secretary David Blunkett will be expected to provide the small print following a review, also announced yesterday.

Existing free schools and academies will continue. I believe this model of independent school, based on a commercial contract with the Secretary of State and often blurred by the role of expansionist academy chains, is a bad one. But I also recognise that the Tories have taken this policy in a direction that was never intended by Labour.

Turning every independent state school back into a maintained school would a time and energy trap and may not be necessary if the legislative framework evens out the difference.

But the significant point for me is that Labour would NOT continue with Michael Gove’s Free Schools Policy, which Twigg describes as divisive and ideological. No new schools would be built under Labour unless there is a demonstrable need for more places.

Parents could sponsor new schools under a future Labour government, as they could under the last, but would have a choice of whether to have an academy or maintained school.

“There will be no bias for or against a school type – so new academies, new maintained schools, new trust schools – all options” he explained.

This is actually a change from what happened in practice under the last Labour government, which introduced the idea of local competitions in which a variety of providers including the local authority could bid to run new schools.

The first open competition was won by a local LA led community school bid so the then government, which was more ideological on this issue than Twigg appears to be, began to undermine the process immediately by encouraging local authorities to go down a “preferred sponsor” route. This prioritised academies, and became the default choice in many cases as it was quicker (and less transparent) and made it easier for local authorities to access BSF funding.

My own personal view is that many parents – faced by the choice of a trust or community school or an academy run by a chain, which in reality is what some parent promoted free schools have become – will plump for the maintained model. This was the case with Elm Green and JCoss – two parent promoted schools set up under Labour.

Finally Twigg sets out a stall that appears to be more for collaboration than competition to achieve higher standards. Much more information is needed on how this would work in practice, but he suggests that schools aspiring to an outstanding Ofsted rating would be required to partner a weaker neighbour and cites the principles of London Challenge, which transformed schools in the capital, through sharing good practice and the strong helping the weak.

This is certainly a more attractive model  than the contentious, divisive and unnecessary forced academies programme and we need more clarity about what would happen to that policy and the over paid unaccountable brokers who promote it on behalf of the DFE.

Crucially he talks about fair admissions “The comprehensive ideal, within a mixed economy of schools” For too long in government Labour has avoided the C word like the plague. Yet comprehensive education is still the key to raising standards for all children.

Some practical suggestions are mentioned – toughening up the Code, enhanced powers for the Office of the Schools’ Adjudicator( and Local Ombudsman’s office where academies are concerned). This really just scratches the surface. There is NO mention of academic selection – one of the big elephants in the room when it comes to our highly segregated school system – or of faith schools or of how we might positively seek to get more balanced intakes across all our schools. Again a lot more detail is needed.

And of course the issue of structures and governance is only half the story. Perhaps more important is what is taught in schools, what is valued, how we ensure breadth in the curriculum, rigorous assessment, good teaching and learning and move to an accountability system that values skills and personal development as well as exam passes.

In some ways it is a workmanlike rather than an inspiring vision for what Labour can achieve. I have always thought Labour would need to do two things if it is to have a credible and exciting education policy.

First to set out how it would deal with the legacy (the prosaic stuff) and then explain its “What if we weren’t starting from here?” vision, which would set out how a fully comprehensive system could work in practice and the role of schools in a fairer, more socially just society.

This isn’t just about fair admissions but also about a broad, engaging curriculum, fewer exams and tests and from the LSN point of view, a final qualification like the Baccalaureate certificate at 18, currently being proposed by the Head Teachers’ Round Table here which  I discussed on the BBC This Week programme last week.

So there is still some way to go but on balance, the direction of travel looks good.

This is a step backward from last year, when the Department for Education published a spread-sheet of per-student income and expenditure for academies for 2010/11 and displayed this information for individual academies on the performance Table. (This is the source of my recent post on Mossbourne finances.) The DfE were heavily criticised by even Tory MPs on the PAC for not showing the individual school expenditure data if the academy was part of a chain but now no information is available.

For maintained schools simply go to the DfE Performance Tables, type in your post code and you will find comprehensive information for your local schools. Financial information includes income per student, and expenditure ranging from the amount spent on teachers and supply staff to ICT and Energy. But only for maintained schools. For instance check Haggerston School or Urswick, maintained schools in Hackney. And compare with Mossbourne (a sponsored academy) or Clapton Girls (a converter academy) and the financial sections state only “No 2011-2012 Consistent Financial Reporting data”

Cameron: We need to see how much money is going into schools

This is a direct contradiction of the statement that David Cameron made to the House of Commons Liaison Committee in March 2013 in response to questioning by Margaret Hodge, as Fiona Millar wrote about at the time

Hodge: “Take the case of academies . How do we know they provide value for money?”

Cameron: “People can increasingly see the funding per pupil that goes into the school and if we are successful in introducing a more national funding formula for schools that will be even clearer. The parent/teacher /local community knows how much follows the pupil into the school and can then see the results. We need to see how much money going into the schools and the results coming out. This will produce results for very transparent amounts of money that are going in.”

fifteen months on, this is manifestly not the case. Neither the parent, the teacher or the local community can see how much income follows the pupil into the school or see how it is spent, if it is an academy.

Public Accounts Committee: Academy Information must be comparable to maintained schools

When the Conservative MPs on the Public Accounts Committee discovered that income and expenditure details were not available at the individual school level, if those schools were part of chains, they were furious. The resulting report was clear in its requirements:

“the Department must insist that every Academy Trust provides it with data showing school level expenditure, including per-pupil costs, and with a level of detail comparable to that available for maintained schools. The Department must then publish this data so that proper judgements and comparisons can be made by Parliament and the public.”

Tory MP Richard Bacon described the lack of financial information as “mind-blowing.” At the time Richard was under the impression that income and expenditure information was available for individual academies and, as a whole, for chains. Even that appears to be no longer available. The point he made was that this is public money and the public should be able to see how much schools receive and how it is spent.

Why the new secrecy?

The DfE would be expected to respond to the Public Accounts Committee report by providing more information on academies. Instead they seem to have withdrawn what financial information was available, so Cameron’s claims of last year are now far from the truth. It is not currently possible to find out how much money any academy received in 2011/12 (including all the new converter academies) or how they spent it. And, as Tory MP Richard Bacon pointed out, this is public money.

I called the DfE and was told the only way to get financial information on academies was to email the EFA (Education Funding Agency). I have submitted a freedom of information request for full financial information on academies to be released.

Note: The DfE site does contain audited accounts for some academies. However these use a completely different format to school accounts and it is not possible to compare with maintained schools or produce comparable figures.

According to the Guardian, one study from Cardiff University said: “All other factors being held constant, students from independent schools tend to do less well than students from comprehensive schools.”

The Cardiff report confirms the Sutton Trust 2010 research which found that comprehensive school pupils were likely to outperform their equally-qualified peers from independent and grammar schools at university.

The second study, from Oxford Brookes University, came to a similar conclusion. According to the Guardian, it found that state school pupils and those from further education colleges were less likely to drop out. They also tended to get a good degree (a first or 2:1) than students from independent schools. And the gap between them grew wider for students with A level grades of CCC or below.

The Oxford Brookes report doesn’t appear to differentiate between state pupils from grammars or comprehensives so it can’t be said to confirm the Sutton Trust’s findings about the superior performance of ex-comprehensive pupils when compared with equally-qualified pupils from independent or grammar schools. However, it does confirm that state-educated pupils are more likely to achieve better degrees than privately-educated ones.

Some comments on the Guardian page suggest this confirms Sir Michael Wilshaw’s recent comments that comprehensive schools are failing the brightest pupils and when they eventually get to university they have catching up to do. But it doesn’t necessarily follow. Both reports looked at students who entered university with the same grades and, yes, it could be argued that the ex-comprehensive school pupils had underperformed at school. But it could equally be argued that those from independent schools had either been spoon-fed to pass the exam or had some superficial polish which initially impressed but was not reflected in the standard of degree.

Or it could be that comprehensive school pupils are better-prepared for university and more able to work independently.

But this is speculation. It may be that the reports suggest possible reasons for the mismatch between the performance of state-educated pupils and those educated privately. But this will be difficult to confirm unless the universities or the Guardian release them into the public domain.

However, it should be remembered that although the OECD found that UK private schools outperformed state schools in the 2009 PISA reading tests the situation was reversed when socio-economic background was taken into account. UK state schools outperformed private ones.

Perhaps it’s time for university admission tutors to consider context when offering places at university.

“In the context of an ad for an education provider, the claim “outstanding academic results” was likely to be interpreted as referring to a current Ofsted rating; a rating which we understood had not been awarded by Ofsted to the Maharishi schools (primary and secondary) located in Lancashire. In the absence of such a rating, we concluded the claim “[Maharishi Free Schools] Have proven outstanding academic results” was misleading and had not been substantiated.”

The Trust defended itself by saying that a 2009 Ofsted inspection of the independent Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, which became the Maharishi Free School in September 2011, used the term “outstanding”. However, this inspection was a light-touch Independent School inspection which is not the same as one for a state school.  And it doesn’t apply to the Maharishi Free School which hasn’t been inspected yet.

The ASA was not impressed with the school’s defence:

“The ASA noted the academic results of the students, which demonstrated they had achieved very good exam results, and we recognised that “outstanding” was a common descriptor used to denote achievement in many industries. However, we considered that parents of school-age children would be aware of Ofsted and its rating system and that “Outstanding” was its highest rating for overall quality of education.”

It’s not the first time the Maharishi Schools Trust has been in trouble. The ASA ruled against it in relation to marketing of the Maharishi Free School last year. The Schools Adjudicator twice ruled against the Admission Criteria of the Maharishi Free School in 2012. And the School failed to enter pupils for Key Stage 2 Sats despite the Funding Agreement making it clear that it should do so.

The Maharishi Schools Trust hopes to open a second free school in Suffolk which will “follow the successful model of the Maharishi Free School in Lancashire.” It’s to be hoped that that doesn’t include admission criteria which fall foul of the Schools Admission Code and misleading marketing.

Toby Young has just hosted a conference for free schools at WLFS and obviously he is a very influential figure in the movement, having set up the flagship free school. That’s why his example is important; if his school has a genuine social mix, then maybe other schools will follow. The anxiety is that the policy overall doesn’t lend itself to fair and open admissions. As the British Humanist Association has pointed out a third of English state schools have faith-based admissions which basically allow covert and overt selection, the net result of which is that wealthier students are siphoned off into them, leaving poorer students to languish in schools which are rather too like secondary moderns in character. The free schools policy looks set to exacerbate an already bad situation with roughly a third of free schools being faith-based in character. Toby’s argument on the podcast is that a great many free schools are based in socially deprived areas; well, yes, this may be the case, but look a school like Canary Wharf College which is situated in one of the most deprived areas in the country, the Isle of Dogs, and yet has fewer than 5% of pupils on FSM. Many of these schools are being set up deliberately to cater for exclusive social, ethnic and religious groups; there’s a genuine worry about ghetto-isation. Particularly troubling for me is the apparent desire for some schools to become military-style boot camps for children from deprived areas while other schools like the Steiner schools are clearly aiming for the liberal, wishy-washy creative market. It’s the worst kind of class stereotyping: boot camps for the poor, “yobby” kids, and frolicking in fields for the rich, arty ones. This policy lends itself to these things happening unless it’s regulated very tightly — which it isn’t being at the moment.

As Fiona Millar pointed out in a recent article for the Guardian, fair admissions only happen when schools lose the autonomy to pick and choose students, and an local body, like a local authority, has control over it. As I say on the podcast, I don’t think the Labour Party are going to change the free schools or academies policies of this current government, but they could tighten up the rules over admissions for ALL schools. One positive thing this government has done is to institute the Pupil Premium which at least gives schools an incentive to admit children from poorer backgrounds because they get more money.

Does WLFS’s attitude towards admissions mark a sea change in attitudes? If someone as right-wing as Toby Young can embrace a fair admissions’ policy, then maybe his example can persuade other schools who are playing the admissions system?? At the moment, without a coherent admissions policy in place, this is all we can hope for.

Funding for Mossbourne

Last year the Department for Education did, for the first time, publish income and expenditure data for individual academies:

Mossbourne, total income per student, 2010/11: £10,335

Funding compared to Inner London schools with high FSM

Now Mossbourne is an inner London school, with a high level of free school meals. How does this compare to other similar schools, and especially to those that weren’t academies? I have not managed to locate a school-by-school spreadsheet for maintained schools in 2010/11 and so am going to give figures for 2009/10. (This seems fair as total DfE expenditure on secondary schools in England in 2010/11 was actually 0.6% lower than in 2009/10.) Analysing the data by the free school meal band:

High FSM: Income of £7,952 per student
Medium FSM: £7,293
Low FSM: £6,387

So Mossbourne received, in 2010/11, 30% more funding per student than the average for inner London secondary schools with high levels of free school meals. This represents £2.85 million extra, given it was registered as having 1,194 students at the time.

Funding compared to Inner London schools with similar FSM

The DfE lists Mossbourne as having, on its measure at that time, 35.9% of students on free school meals. Taking the band of Inner London schools between 31% and 41% FSM (ie, 5% on either side of Mossbourne), we find an even bigger gap:

Average income per pupil for similar FSM:  £7,425

Of the 21 schools in this FSM range, only three received more than £8,000 per student and the highest (Southfields Community College in Wandsworth) was on £8,462 – almost £2,000 per student less than Mossbourne. The only other school in Hackney in this band of similar levels of free school meals (Cardinal Pole on 38.4% FSM) received just £7,172 per student.

Some caveats have to be added to this analysis. The DfE notes that “academies receive additional funding to reflect the wider responsibilities that are carried out by the local authority for maintained schools”. This refers to the mysterious LACSEG grant, which is designed to calculate the extra an academy should receive in place of local authority services and which baffled even the Public Accounts Committee. However it would certainly be expected to be nowhere near £2.8 million.

(Note: I have only compared Mossbourne to schools that held maintained status at the time. It may be that Sir Michael’s statement is accurate if Mossbourne is compared to other academies. The DfE spread-sheet suggests six other academies received more than £10,000 per student.)

Mossbourne: Funding Works

Nothing is certain in the complex world of academy accounts. However the above comparisons indicate that Mossbourne has actually been funded to levels significantly above those of similar maintained schools. Indeed its 2011 accounts, from Companies House, suggest the school hasn’t spent all the money and had a very large surplus, £2.2 million, in the bank at 31st August 2011.

There has been a lot of hype around Mossbourne, as the poster child for academies. Some of this hype is not justified. It is not, for instance, true that it replaced a failing school. The previous school on the site, Hackney Downs, closed in 1995 – nine years before Mossbourne opened. Mossbourne has a completely new set of buildings and a very different intake – the 36% of students on free school meals compares to 77% at Hackney Downs.

Also its intake is not as disadvantaged as is sometimes claimed. The Mossbourne cohort is, measured by their Year 6 CATs scores, actually at the national average and well above the Hackney average. Indeed a change in the Mossbourne admissions policy this year will ensure that its intake is  permanently above the Hackney average, as they are now banding by national ability levels rather than local ones.

However, even if it is sometimes over-hyped, there is no doubt that Mossbourne’s achievements are remarkable. It consistently achieves one of the highest figures for value added for its students in the country. Indeed if you take out those schools who achieve high value added by gaming the system with GCSE equivalents (which Mossbourne, unlike other academies, tends not to do) it is arguably a whole level above other schools in the progress its students achieve.

Sir Michael is right to be proud of what he achieved at Mossbourne, and part of that is down to the high expectations that he described on the Today programme and which are certainly key to the success story. However what made possible the extra support and after-school activities that he described may well be a level of funding beyond that of other similar schools. As I have suggested before it appears that funding works when it comes to schools.

Along with a whole range of expert speakers from inside and outside of education, I was fortunate enough to listen to two who have been at the forefront of raising the educational performance in their respective administrations. Sad to say, the Secretary of State for Education wasn’t one of them, although he did do a question and answer session, more of which later.

First up was Dr Avis Glaze, now retired, but a key figure in transforming Ontario’s education system in recent times. Her desire to provide the very best for all children shone through. Her approach, so different from the one we experience daily in this country, was striving for excellence and equity through trust, respect and collaboration. These were not soft options for the educators of Ontario, rather it was a rigorous way to address a whole range of issues that beset their school system. .

When she took on the job of transforming an under-performing and unfair education system, Avis met with all the principals and listened to what they had to say. She recognised that they all wanted the very best for the children in their schools but that there were obstacles in the way. She deliberately involved the unions, demonstrating to them that the reforms she was proposing would bring benefits to their members. Compare and contrast! At the heart of all the reforms was using research: well grounded and respected research rather than the latest fad.

This was a theme picked up the next day by Pasi Sahlberg, a leading policy advisor in Finland, a country that consistently tops international league tables. He spoke at length about the Finnish way, and, whilst acknowledging the differences between Finnish and British society, advocated an approach which has worked so well in his country, but seems to be ignored by so many other jurisdictions around the world including England.

His three key messages were that we need less testing and more trusting, more prevention of under-performance and less repair and, as mentioned earlier, more evidence based policies and less experimentation.

He contrasted the competition, standardisation, test based accountability and diverse schooling to enable parental choice, beloved by our own politicians, past and present, and Finland’s collaboration, creativity, trust based responsibility and equity. If all schools are good, goes the Finnish mantra, why do we need lots of different kinds?

There are other differences in Finland that affect the quality of education. These include a lack of private education and only training teachers who are not only academically very able but, crucially for me, have a moral desire and a passion to educate. Pasi pointed out that high performing administrations don’t over prescribe (some in the far east have in the past but are moving away from it), don’t privatise and don’t confront their teachers!

Which brings me to Mr Gove. He did a question and answer session where he talked about wanting to avoid what had happened in the past, where only an elite were educated to a high standard. He argued that knowledge and skills are not alternatives and that one needs the other. He also argued for the use of technology to support learning.

One question, however, encapsulated the difference between his session and the other two I have mentioned. Asked if he shouldn’t he try to win the hearts and minds of teachers and their leaders if he wanted to bring about reform, his response was that there was a great array of views in the world of education and that he would listen, but it seems only to ‘outstanding headteachers’. The phrase was mentioned again and again.

Two things worry me here: firstly, the cult of ‘outstanding headteacher’, and secondly the mood of the conference as I perceived it. Maybe being only a ‘good headteacher’ I felt excluded from Mr Gove’s listening club. But most ‘outstanding headteachers’ were ‘good headteachers’ once. Were they that different then? Didn’t their views count until they became outstanding? Some will go back to being ‘good’ or ‘needing improvement’ as Ofsted carry out their intention of reducing the number of outstanding schools or if heads move to challenging schools. Presumably they will cease to have anything worth listening to if that happens.

More worrying was the huge contrast between the reception given to Avis and Pasi and that given to Mr Gove. Of course politicians are more likely to treated less generously. However,the delegates were not hothead union delegates. There may have been a smattering of Marxist and the odd enemy of promise in the room but, by and large, the people in the room represented a broad cross section of leadership across the English education system – the people who any government will need to bring about change in schools. Whilst I am sure there were some whose views are closely aligned to Mr Gove’s, the vast majority felt hostility: to the proposed changes, to the current issues and to the complete lack of trust. Consequently various questions were accompanied by spontaneous applause as they hit raw nerves and an atmosphere of subdued anger and frustration bubbled away through the session.

I came away inspired but also depressed. Here were people who have transformed the lives of children in their jurisdictions, and they were both saying the same thing. There is a way to create the very best for all of our children but I’m afraid in this country it will be sacrificed for the sake of political dogma, establishment views and what sells newspapers.

Assessment is a hot topic at the moment – the new GCSE proposals have been announced and the consultation about secondary accountability has just finished. So why was an article about primary school assessment hidden away?

The article says Education Secretary, Michael Gove, spoke at at the National College for School Leadership Seizing Success conference on 13 June. His comments were made “in advance of the consultation on primary assessment and accountability”. This long-awaited document hasn’t been published either – it’s due sometime in the summer.

The title, Assessing without levels, gives the impression that levels have been abolished: “the current system of ‘levels’ used to report children’s attainment and progress will be removed [and] it will not be replaced.”

This isn’t entirely accurate. The requirement to report levels to parents has gone and schools will be allowed to decide their own pupil tracking methods. But the DfE makes it clear that schools will “continue to benchmark their performance through statutory end of key stage assessments, including national curriculum tests” so unless there is a commitment to abolish numbered Levels at the end of Key Stage 2 then levels will remain.

“The new programmes of study set out what should be taught by the end of each key stage,” says the article. But academies and free schools don’t have to follow the national curriculum. However, ALL schools must comply with statutory duties on testing and assessment. If assessment is linked to programmes of study then primary academies and free schools will still have to match their assessment frameworks with national curriculum expectations about what children should have learned.

In any case, the consultation period for comments about the primary curriculum didn’t end until 16 April and the DfE hasn’t yet published its response. But the DfE acts as if the curriculum is fixed. This doesn’t bode well for the yet-to-appear consultation of primary assessment and accountability.

The DfE says it will publish “examples of good practice which schools may wish to follow”. In other words, the DfE will make it clear what it expects “good” schools to be doing. And it will work with “education publishers and external test developers to signpost schools to a range of potential approaches.” This should lead to an explosion is the marketing of “tests” for school use.

So we have an article hidden away on the DfE website, an unpublished response to a consultation and a yet-to-be-published consultation document which looks set to arrive just before the summer holidays. At the same time the DfE appears to be ignoring whatever comments were made in the finished consultation and pre-empting the results of one that hasn’t appeared.

Isn’t Michael Gove supposed to be in favour of “rigour”?

CORRECTION:  The article above has been amended.  I originally wrote that Michael Gove had made a speech at the NCTL conference.  The DfE article said “the Secretary of State spoke about schools’ ongoing assessment under the new national curriculum.”   I misinterpreted “spoke about” to mean speech.  But Michael Gove did not make a speech – he took part in a question-and-answer session.  There would, therefore, be no need for the DfE to publish a speech.  I have, therefore, deleted any reference to a speech.

My thanks to Michael Dix, who was present at the conference, for pointing this out.

3 levels of progress (also termed “expected levels of progress”) sound fair and equitable, being based on individual value added and expecting the same of all students. But a quick analysis of the statistics shows that the level of progress to be expected depends on the starting point of the child. For those achieving a 5a in Maths, fully 99% make 3 levels of progress. But for those starting with a 3c, only 16% made 3 levels of progress in 2012.

Note: This post has been edited & updated: The transition matrices include two tables for transition in each of Maths and English, one based on SAT levels for the student in that subject and one based on SAT levels across English, Maths and Science. This post originally included only the latter, but now includes both. Thanks to @giftedphoenix for this work on this, including showing the full transition tables.

Across England, % of students making 3 levels of progress – by SAT level (in that subject)

Across England, % of students making 3 levels of progress – by SAT level (average of English, Maths, Science)

A Perverse Measure

Imagine two teachers in a school which sets for Maths:

In Teacher A’s top set, whose students all achieved 5a and 5b, 80% are on target for 3 levels of progress and to get a B at GCSE. Only a handful are on target for more than 3 levels of progress.

In Teacher B’s lower set, whose students all achieved 3b or below, only 50% are on target for 3 levels of progress.

Imagine a performance review based on the 3 levels of progress. Teacher A would receive lots of praise for the 80% achieving the target and, under performance related pay, expect a rise. And it is clear that Ofsted would regard it as very wrong for Teacher B, with only half the class achieving the 3 levels, to get any rise at all.

The 3 levels of progress measure suggests Teacher A’s class is performing well above national average and Teacher B’s class are performing well below it. The reality is the opposite. Teacher A’s class are progressing below the national average for students of their ability and are an example of this week’s Ofsted criticism of too low expectations for high attainers. On the other hand Teacher B’s class are performing well above the average for students of similar ability across the country.

Let’s Abandon the 3 Levels Measure now.

Sir Michael Wilshaw is right to say that most students who achieve level 5 at age 11, and certainly those starting on 5b or 5a, should be expected to achieve a grade A or better at GCSE. So let’s abandon the measure of 3 levels of progress, used by the DfE and in the Ofsted Data Dashboard, that sets an expectation of level 5 students achieving only a B. 3 levels of progress is too low a target for high attainers, while being a very tough target for less able students.

There have been many dubious measures that have come out of the DfE over the years but this is possibly the silliest.

Date Source

Key Stage 4 results, and transition tables: Taken from Raise Online library – with thanks to Heather Leatt

Recently quite a few posters have arrived on this forum to promote the idea that this is an important area of policy for this government to pursue.

The main problem I have with this is that these views don’t seem to exist in the real world. As a lecturer/teacher trainer I’ve worked with a variety of ex-military personnel who have found that the current range of opportunities for teacher training have been entirely appropriate. I know many military and ex-military personnel well and none of them have ever expressed the view that it would be wise for people coming out of the services to move rapidly into teaching without teacher training.

So my question to the new posters is who are you?
I’d be really interested to chat to you on the phone for example to better understand your perspectives and why you are so passionate about these issues.

I am extremely easy to find through my public profiles on linkedin and Facebook or you can contact me through Twitter @cyberrhetoric. All these profiles use the same picture that I use here.

Sometimes real human is needed to overcome the barriers which exist in anonymous discussion forums. Please rest assured that I will protect your identities if you wish to conceal them.